The OSM road hierarchy being broad and vague compared to functional class definitions is exactly why this needs to be a team effort based on the bias and consensus among multiple mappers. Please realize that going out and changing everything to fit 1:1 with a government map is still "the opinions of an insignificant mapper". It was your decision to move ahead with these large, rapid changes twice without prior discussion, notice, or explanation. OSM is separate project from the Maine DOT. If we copied other free maps, OSM would not need to exist.

It is still a public through street. There are plenty of streets that exist with a single or no property along them, and that doesn't make them service roads. By 'private' I mean a private-owned roadway intended for customers, employees, residents, etc. to access a building where usage as a public street may be limited or restricted, which Linney Street is not in this case. It can be used as a street to access another street.

Another tag that can be used to imply this is just a narrow public street with a service road-like function is highway=service with service=alley. Alleys are more often publicly-accessible than typical highway=service ways.

Linney Street is a public street, not solely for the post office, based on what I can tell from its signage. There isn't any sort of 'no thru traffic' sign at its beginning and with the Bing street imagery the iD editor provides, I think I can make out an 'adopt a highway' sign (which I don't believe would be posted along a private service driveway) and some kind of red-on-white text sign that's most likely a private parking sign. However, Bing's street view imagery is horrible and I could be wrong.

Maine's state classifications are the states functional classifications which don't exactly line up 1:1 with OpenStreetMap's highway classification hierarchy and its definitions. For example, a road identified as a Principal Arterial by functional classification varies between Interstates, various other freeways and expressways, and other roads identified as important such as thoroughfares through major cities, airport/seaport access roads, and rural highways connecting smaller towns, etc. There are many inconsistencies that come with this data that makes it not useful in the scope of OSM. For instance, why should a trunk road end at Gateway Center Drive, a small dead-end road with a couple warehouses and a park & ride in Trenton, miles after it passes through a major highway junction in Ellsworth and before it reaches the bustling tourist destination of Bar Harbor? My concern isn't exactly that these trunk roads dead-end at small towns/lesser roads, but rather that this information is irrelevant to the average Joe who isn't in the loop with FHWA jargon using OSM as a map to get around. What the road connects to and lesser details like traffic data, speed limits, physical construction, etc. are more useful in this case.

Hello cm81447, you have been questioned by both me and other contributors in the past to please discuss mass changes to highways like these before going on a big edit spree like this. You have not yet explained why you are making these changes in your changeset comments or discussion replies, though your edits appear to be based solely on functional classification data. Functional classification definitions typically differ from OSM definitions, and are more geared towards government usages such as identifying how highways should be maintained rather than for civilian navigational purposes. By OSM definitions, a small rural town like Eastport should not have a trunk route. It may make sense from a strategical standpoint in that it links to a cargo port, but that is more of a job for functional classification maps. Primary and secondary would suffice in this scenario, as this is a small town link by relatively minor rural highways.

That aside, you need to please explain what you're doing in changeset comments when it comes to edits like these so other users may understand quickly what's being done. "Fixed road" is very ambiguous, and at a glance to me, I would believe that you have adjusted its alignment, corrected its tags, or something like that which needs very little explanation. If you don't start a discussion for your change, it would be best to at the very least explain why you're making the change so that future questions can be answered.

It is very valuable to have another editor like you willing to make mundane yet big and important highway edits like these, but it becomes disruptive when others can't understand why you're making these changes and can't keep track of them.

*North Vernon

Hello, while it is perfectly acceptable to have traffic signal nodes placed on the intersection nodes (especially if you're adding them for the first time in a very quick edit), it is more accurate and representative of which roads/part of the roads are affected with the traffic signals on the stop lines, especially to routing systems that recognize traffic signals. This is especially important for four-way intersections along divided roadways. Generally, it is better to move signals to the more complex configuration than vice versa when possible.

It is confusing. 'All' technically means all applicable rather than all except those specified. It depends on the way, but for instance, a cycle and foot path that allows motor vehicle access from land owners but does not allow horses would be left untagged defaulting to all=yes with motor_vehicle=private and horse=no applied. If this way were permanently inaccessible to anyone or only to government/emergency vehicles, the default all=yes should be changed to all=no, which will make the road inaccessible on routing systems and render as such.

Thank you for informing me. Looks like there may be a greater problem here with all the rapid city reclassification edits they're making.

The source that should be trusted in this case is the one directly from VDOT versus Wikipedia. It seems possible that the VA 124 designation extended up to Lorcum Lane at some point but the Wikipedia information wasn't updated, whereas the VDOT LRS data was updated back in February of this year. The relation still extending up to Lorcum Lane is an oversight on my part.

In Virginia, it's very common for state highway designations to end abruptly at county and municipal boundaries or above or below other highways like I 66 in this instance. Throughout much of the US, road numbers simply imply who funds/maintains the roadways, leading to examples like this. I am not 100% sure why VDOT would want to hand over a short section of an already short route over to Arlington County to maintain, though, but my guess is VDOT is slowly trying to decommission VA 124, effectively making it an unsigned county road, and is now down to the section that is below the I 66 right-of-way.

A similar example of this is VA 228, which starts at VA 7 in Dranesville, bypasses Herndon, then is briefly rerouted onto Elden Street before abruptly termination at the boundary between Herndon and unincorporated Fairfax County, where it becomes Secondary Route 657, a county-level highway. For whatever reason, VDOT sought fit not to continue funding the short section from the town boundary to the Dulles Toll Road.

Hello, the very short VA 124 designation is actually only from US 29 up to the I 66 overpass rather than up to Lorcum Lane according to VDOT: https://www.virginiaroads.org/datasets/VDOT::lrs-route-master/explore

Please do not use 'no' for 'all' when tagging road access. Instead, leave it as default to imply other non-foot traffic is allowed on the road and tag access 'no' for foot traffic only. access=no implies the road cannot be traveled at all.

Like I implied, I didn't "guess" the importance of the roads. It's pretty clear to see how a road is used based on its traffic data when put up against other nearby roads, with consideration for the context of which area they're and where they go. The edits I made in downtown Cincinnati a couple years back were primarily based on roads being signed as US Routes and Interstate Alt. routes. I've changed my stance to be less so oriented on how a road is signed but rather its actual importance if you take away those factors.

I disagree that Loveland-Madeira/Camargo and Columbia/Lebanon should be the same classification as McKinney and Loveland west of Lebanon. The former are more important in the sense that they are longer, straighter, and busier roads with more development along them and they form a direct connection from Loveland to the nearby Interstates and US 22. I would compare them less with mostly-residential collector roads and more to a highway like Route 48 which also links Loveland to the nearby highways, just in the other direction. I could see Kemper Road west of 22 making sense as a secondary route given its similar characteristics and AADT compared to Fields Ertel Road, but I'm on the fence about upgrading it to secondary east of that, as while it still provides somewhat of a through route there, it's not as direct or as developed as the current secondary roads that go in/out of Loveland and there are better, more direct routes from Loveland to Cincinnati and Mason. Loveland-Madeira/Camargo also links the area down to Madeira and Mariemont. I of course don't believe every single road that links every single suburban town to each other should be upgraded to secondary but this is a comparatively major route to the other nearby tertiary routes which do not serve as direct connections between other towns/commercial areas.

I think secondary for a road like Reed Hartman while relatively minor roads like Lebanon Road are also being tagged as secondary is perfectly fine. The only instance where roads like Reed Hartman are viable alternatives to mainline Interstates are when those Interstates are backed up, which is a very frequent scenario but not a constant one. In regular traffic, I 71 ALT serves as a typical arterial road, connecting other secondary routes to the Interstates, albeit one built with expressway characteristics and instead of retail areas, residential neighborhoods, schools, etc., it's office/industrial parks. Furthermore, unlike US 22 and 42, it does not leave the metro or connect to any downtowns of any sort. However, if it were directly adjacent to a road like Lebanon Road, I would either upgrade Reed Hartman Highway to primary or downgrade Lebanon Road to tertiary, but since these two roads are in different sections of the metro that see widely varying traffic volumes altogether, I don't see any particular issues with the two being classified the same.

Snider Road could be upgraded to secondary. It does parallel multiple other secondary routes but a scenario like this is bound to occur in such an unorganized semi-grid layout like the Cincinnati metro's is. Upgrading Tylersville Road between I 75 and US 42, Mason Montgomery Road from US 42 to I 71, and Field Ertel Road from there to US 22 forms a network of major arterial roads that are just important as US 42 and US 22. A highway like US 42 may hold more priority as it's an intercity route which leaves the metro, but that's really only when it actually exits the metro, and while it parallels I 71 through Cincinnati and Mason, it is mostly just a busy commercialized thoroughfare and links other major highways and suburban cities areas just like the other three aforementioned roads do.

Streets like Terra Firma and Stillpass are in a position where they are definitely more important than typical residential roads but not exactly as much as a tertiary route. I'd say it makes sense to revert them to their original classifications, as there isn't really a way to imply that these roads are still relatively busy through streets that connect other major through streets.

Feel free to do whatever you want to my edits, I don't own them and can't control them, but I'd rather work with what I've begun than start over.

Hello, please slow down with your highway reclassifications here. It's one thing to change the classification of a highway or two, but there are some big, rapid, and undiscussed changes you are making all around the state and it's hard to keep track of what's going on. I recommend pausing these sort of edits so that these changes can be discussed with other editors, especially since you are creating and removing trunk routes.

Despite what my edits come across as, they weren't implemented haphazardly as I had identified the places and other roads they'd the roads I worked on would connect to and looked at AADT data, rather than going in and changing roads based on first impressions. You could say I half-assed upgrading the roads under the regard that I only upgraded some of the roads and left some other nearby ones untouched, but it's a gradual process which I've been making across the area which I had previously done with around Hamilton, Middletown, Forest Park, and closer to the downtown area of Cincinnati.

Regarding the road classification hierarchy, major intercity roads regardless of who maintains them are better candidates for being upgraded to trunk if their purpose is to connect other cities. The way I see it collector roads should be tertiary, major collectors/minor arterials should be secondary, and major arterials should be primary. In my opinion, however, this should be regardless of how the road is signed or maintained, what the functional classification is, etc., because that ultimately isn't always consistent with how roads are used for travelling.

For the most part, I understand the road hierarchy, but I'm also not understanding whether I should revert this back to how it was before like you mentioned in the first comment or "stick around to finish the job" by continuing to work upon it and upgrade the now under-classified roads.

Which particular roads would you say are overclassified here?

I think shorter arterial roads that provide connections between major highways or high-traffic areas like commercial zones can be just as vital as major thoroughfares that stretch across the metro in their own regards. I also think it makes sense for some roads with lower traffic counts to be classified higher than some roads with higher traffic counts depending on the scenario. For example, Route 42 in this area is an objectively more important route than Snider Road through Mason is, but it sees less traffic than it. US 42 spans the northeastern Cincinnati area connecting multiple suburbs/towns in the area to each other while Snider mainly serves to connect other tertiary and secondary roads and the residential and industrial areas along it. I think Kemper, Snider, and Pfeiffer could be bumped up to secondary and Tylersville between I 75 and US 42 bumped up to primary. Looking back on my changes though, Butler-Warren Road is the only road which may have been overclassified in my opinion.

I've been relying on the Sentinel Hub EO Browser which can show very recent imagery but with a very low resolution. I'm still able to make out which roads do and don't exist anymore and which of them are under construction, but lane markings and finer details like that are not at all decipherable from the imagery you're provided, so I tend to leave that out for someone who would know.

Simply based on how the roads serve relative to other nearby roads and how they were initially tagged. There were little to no secondary roads in this area, so I applied that classification to the (now formerly) tertiary routes that provided more access to commercial areas and major roadways than typical tertiary collector roads do.

Hello, please do not create isolated trunk routes like this. Roads are not classified based on their size, but rather how they serve as a road in the area. Proper trunk routes are like US 29 and US 301 which link multiple cities and other major highways. Primary classification is best fit for this segment.

No worries, I made some errors like this when I first started out OSM. It's important to be cautious with editing roads because this data is used by private services like Amazon and Lyft as well as emergency services like disaster response teams, but adding street names is a valuable contribution.